Ibrahim Traore (1988-) was President of Burkina Faso from 6 October 2022, succeeding Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba.
Biography[]
Ibrahim Traore was born in Bondokuy, Burkina Faso in 1988, and he joined the Burkinabe army in 2009 and was trained in Morocco. He served in the UN peacekeeping force in Timbuktu during the Malian Civil War, and he later helped combat the jihadist insurgency in Burkina Faso. Traore was promoted to captain in 2020, and he participated in the January 2022 Burkina Faso coup d'etat before leading another coup against junta leader Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba in September 2022 in response to his failure to contain the jihadist insurgency. Traore became the new head of the MPSR military junta, and he was celebrated by civilians flying Russian flags; Traore was himself a Marxist who was influenced by Thomas Sankara, and he supported Russia in the belief that Russia's anti-Western cause was an anti-imperialist one. He began collaborating with the Wagner Group following the coup, enlisting the help of the Russians against the jihadists and reopening the Russian embassy in 1992.